Between Shanghai and Manhattan: Wenda Gu, New Breed of Artist at popcorn youth

Between Shanghai and Manhattan: Wenda Gu, New Breed of Artist

Published by Natasha January 22nd, 2007 in Art, Interview.

Here’s the complete article that appeared in this week’s Ithaca Times about artist Wenda Gu, who left his home of Shanghai in the mid 80s for New York City, where he has lived ever since. To read the complete transcript of our exclusive interview with Wenda Gu, go to our interviews section. His exhibit “Forest of Stone Steles” will be on view at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum until March 14.

Chinese contemporary artists have enjoyed a powerful popularity in the United States in recent years, no doubt the result of China’s own economic boom. Asian art, and Chinese art in particular, has captured the interest of many Western art critics, collectors, and curators, and has firmly established itself at the forefront of cutting-edge contemporary art. It was almost universally agreed that the major art trend of 2006 was the emergence into the mainstream of contemporary Chinese artists, among whom Wenda Gu certainly stands as one of the leading voices.

Artist Wenda Gu is frank when discussing the recent rise of Chinese artists into Western consciousness. “How much the world will pay attention to China will depend on China’s status,” Gu says. “If the economy is going well, the [art] market will go well. It depends on the situation. In the late 80s, the Russian vanguard was so hot, and then ‘89 came, Russia fell apart, and there were no Russian artists to be seen.”

Although Gu insists that the most successful art is without political ambition, paradoxically, artists must still rely on their country’s political situation in order to achieve success. “It depends on the country’s status and their cultural status,” Gu says. “Otherwise, artists cannot make a big splash. You really rely on where you are, the context.”

Gu, who was born in Shanghai in 1955, was raised as a youth during the Cultural Revolution, and was brought up in a world of suppression and censorship. In the early 1980s, much of his work was so controversial that he was rarely able to show in galleries. In the mid 80s, leaving Shanghai for New York City, Gu became a member of the Chinese “new wave” artist diaspora that ripened in the capitalist-friendly venues of NYC.

Gu now calls NYC home (he has studios in Brooklyn and upstate New York), although he travels to Shanghai every few months to oversee projects in his other two studios. Half the year, Gu travels to around ten different countries a year, attending his shows, giving lectures, accepting commissions and promoting his work.

“My base is in New York, and, of course, my origins are in China, so it’s a very interesting situation,” says Gu, peering out from his trademark round, black-framed glasses. “It can be conflicting, in terms of culture, society, social structure, because during my time in school I was trained with Marxist ideology, and in New York I was trained with capitalism; [It’s] so contradicting, but both together gave me a lot of strength. When you know both, you can compare. My work is very reflective of that situation.”

Once deemed “outsider art,” Gu’s now high-profile work deals with broad, timely issues of ethnicity, minority, globalization, language and communication. Rarely is his work overtly self-referential; Gu prefers to work on a more anonymous, global scale, such as his ongoing project “United Nations,” which features large screens made of hair, arranged to form Gu’s pseudo-Chinese characters. Over the years, Gu has shown an intense preoccupation with the fundamental biology of the human body.

In awe of both ancient Roman temples and the Great Wall of China, Gu’s works are frequently colossal in scale. “This kind of work is not only modern, but also brings out the power from history,” Gu says of his installations. “History and past, present and future - to bring these things together, that has always been my fantasy.”

His installation “Forest of Stone Steles: Retranslation and Rewriting of Tang Poetry,” a dozen of which will be shown at the Johnson Museum, is dizzying in its repetition and monumentality (there are fifty stones total), both an homage to ancient Chinese tradition and a commentary on garbled East-meets-West communication.

His most recent works both celebrate and criticize these cultural differences, often coming together in a playful, highly conceptual way. “Forest of Stone Steles” also channels a certain holistic, meditative aura; the dragon scales that run along the edges of the steles are both an abstract conceptualization and a powerful reminder of the artist’s own eccentric, creative energy.

Anyone who can read Chinese or English will find “Forest of Stone Steles” cheekily humorous in its faux-translation of ancient, revered Tang poetry. “So with each translation, you lose something and you create something,” says Gu. “Any translation between two cultures transforms into other stages; at the same time, misinterpretation with the audience is involved - that is our reality with cultural exchange.”

Aside from being a commentary on the confusions of global communication, “Stone Steles” is a critique of modern-day historians, or what happens - or doesn’t happen - when history is interpreted, recorded, and written down. (The ink prints that line the walls are, of course, a much more fragile historical document, Gu seems to tell us.)
Gu is a new breed of artist. Willfully defying any ethnic or national categorization - and indeed, no label seems fitting - Gu deliberately points out that in two years time, he will have lived in NYC the same number of years that he has lived in Shanghai.

Gu was trained in Classical Chinese painting - unusual for most artists of his generation - yet is equally schooled in matters of global commerce (most of his steles in this exhibition were completed and shipped from Shanghai because costs were significantly cheaper) and the cutthroat modern art world.

In this way, Gu does not quite fit in with the younger generation of Chinese artists that are now enjoying vanguard status in the 21st century art world - he is neither Chinese nor American, but rather an ambiguous melding of both. Gu is perhaps one of the first of the truly “global” artists - Chinese ethnically and historically, but thoroughly American in mannerisms, attitude and culture.

“In this postmodern era, with immigration and cultural diaspora, on one side I gain strength because I know both sides,” says Gu. “But then I also have a disadvantage, because when I do go to China, people think I am Americanized. Here, people think I am… not quite American-born, not quite Americanized.”

Appropriately, Gu leaves his works open to interpretation for his diverse audience. “I am only half of the creator; once the work is displayed in public, the audience is the second part of the creator, because people look at these works with their different backgrounds, their different education, they see these things maybe totally differently than what I want them to see,” explains Gu. “So when my work is finished, the audience actually continues to be the creator. I am just the initiator, the appreciation becomes invention, too.”

“Traditionally, artists would be upset if audiences interpreted their works differently from what the artist wishes them to,” continues Gu. “I believe that the audience has the right to create their own [point of view]. That is the joy of my work. For the audience to follow the artist’s direction, for me, that is a little bit dull.”

Indeed, nearly every aspect of his identity as an artist is a melding of ideas; Gu combines ancient Chinese tradition with a strong Western sense of irony; his works are often expressed in many different languages - some are most famously of his own invention - just like Gu himself. His art even reflects his personal life. Gu is married to an American-born, Caucasian woman, an interior designer, who also enjoys success overseas at her firm, which is based in Shanghai.
Gu has been striving to make a name for himself in the modern art world for over twenty years, but it is only in the last five years that he has become ubiquitous to the mainstream public - a fact that he credits largely to China’s emerging status as a leading power. This attitude reveals Gu to be more frank than modest; he has worked hard, and is finally enjoying the fruits of his labors.

Gu is open to fielding common complaints many critics express about the recent outpouring of “hot” Chinese art. With the recent commercialization of Chinese art as being a hot commodity - works by popular artists are routinely sold in the six-figure range - critics worry that Chinese artists are pandering to a Western audience for the sake of commercial success and Western approval.

“Of course, I deal with it,” says Gu frankly. “With auction art, Chinese contemporary art is ‘hip,’ you know, hot. I’ve experienced these things very dramatically, and not a lot of people know it. They talk about Chinese art as so marketable, but when I came from China, the period was still communist, socialist, and I was an underground artist. My name was on the government blacklist until 2000, when the Chinese government changed the system… I came to the west at the beginning; I felt that I had such a freedom to express myself, but it’s only until recently the hot market is because of China’s economic development. Without that background… I mean, let’s say I’m a Vietnamese artist or a Taiwanese artist, I probably wouldn’t have the same kind of exposure… Now I feel I’m getting the benefit from being Chinese for the first time.”

Despite receiving public support from the Chinese government today, many contemporary Chinese artists still feel tension with the Chinese government, and perhaps even pressure for self-censorship to protect themselves. “The censorship is always there,” says Gu. “The political system and art always have a conflict, a tension… But Chinese officials now are learning to be tolerant, to a certain extent. They understand that if the are more agreeable, it is a good image for them. I mean, politicians are politicians.”

Like a few others, Gu is making art at a crucial turning point in global politics. With works like “Forest of Stone Steles” quite literally becoming permanent markers - a commentary on historical preservation, perhaps - of this period in the art world, Gu is poised to make history, just as the ancient Chinese classical calligraphy masters before him. But towards the end of his interview, Gu described himself as “not a pure Chinese artist anymore.” Gu may not be remembered for being a “pure Chinese” artist, but perhaps for something more global in conception. “I am a witness of change,” says Gu. “The dilemma between China and America: the negatives and positives, the construction and the damages - I’m really an eyewitness. This is a fortune, and I’m really, really lucky.”

Wenda Gu’s works “Forest of Stone Steles” and “United Nation” will be on view at the Johnson Museum from Jan. 20 to Mar. 14.

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